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From the forests of the Amazon to the streets of Puyo, FOSPA brought together Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, local communities, and social movements to confront extractivism and build alternatives.

By: Andrea Echeverri Sierra

For six days in August, thousands of people from across the Amazon and beyond gathered in Puyo, Ecuador, to share experiences, strategies and hopes for the future of the region. Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, social movements, youth, women, academics and civil society organisations came together through assemblies, workshops, ceremonies, cultural activities and a powerful march through the streets of the city.

The gathering took place against a stark reality. The Amazon is approaching a dangerous tipping point. Once imagined as an almost infinite forest, the region is increasingly threatened by deforestation, degradation, fires and global warming, with potentially devastating consequences for people, biodiversity and the climate system.

Yet FOSPA was not a gathering defined by despair. Again and again, what emerged from conversations, meals, ceremonies, a joint action plan and collective action was a sense that resistance is already happening, and that another future remains possible when people organise together.

The Amazon Under Threat

The Amazon bioregion— larger than the European Union and shared across nine countries—once felt infinite to its ancestral guardians. Today, however, it stands at the precipice of a dangerous tipping point, one that seems straight out of a post-apocalyptic film, the rainforest is rapidly shifting toward savannization. This impending ecological collapse threatens not only the Amazonian web of life, but the entire planetary stability. The consequences are catastrophic: a global climate feedback loop that would render international climate targets entirely unattainable; the disruption of atmospheric circulation, triggering widespread droughts across South America and altering weather patterns as far away as the Asian monsoons and Antarctic ice systems; and a catastrophic loss of socio-agrobiodiversity across ecological, cultural, pharmaceutical, and economic dimensions.

Although there are localized tipping points, such as the savannization in specific regions of Bolivia and Brazil, and the loss of ecological connectivity between the Andes and the Amazon, we find ourselves at a critical and extremely fragile moment in which we must act to prevent the Amazon region from reaching a critical threshold. With scientific models warning that this tipping point could be reached between 2040 and 2050 if current trends of deforestation, degradation, fires, and global warming persist, immediate and transformative action is imperative. Amidst this urgency, grassroots hope and resistance shine through numerous regional and local initiatives.

The Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (FOSPA)

The Global Forest Coalition (GFC) has joined the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (FOSPA) at different times. FOSPA is a regional, autonomous, and pluralistic platform that brings together Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, social movements, civil society, and academia from the nine countries of the Amazon basin. Formed in 2002 within the framework of the World Social Forum, it has become a key space for political coordination and action to defend life, territories, and justice in the face of the climate crisis and extractivism.

FOSPA 2026. GFC

Although FOSPA is an ongoing process, its most visible milestones to date are reflected in its twelve editions held in various countries of the Amazon basin. In 2026, GFC participated in the 12th edition of FOSPA in Puyo (Ecuadorian Amazon) from August 16 to 21, with the participation of thousands of people from 32 countries, primarily from countries within the basin. The gathering was rich and diverse, including field trips to identify impacts and celebrate alternatives, a market and food fair, a youth camp, cultural and artistic activities, workshops, working groups, plenary sessions, ceremonies and spiritual guidance, Indigenous People´s and women’s gatherings, self-organized events, a large march; and many shared experiences during dinners and meetings to harmonize our feelings about life into new plans and strategies.

The vibrant convergence of ancestral wisdom, daily resistance, and unwavering solidarity through walking the territories, sharing meals, listening to Indigenous elders, youth, and women in spirited assemblies, and participating in spiritual ceremonies is striking, it leaves an indelible mark. Hearing firsthand accounts from defenders whose very cosmogonies, rivers, and bodies are targeted by corporate extractivism shifts our understanding from a conceptual awareness of crisis to a visceral, embodied recognition of interconnected struggles. FOSPA reinforced the conviction that defending the Amazon is not merely an environmental task; it is an urgent defense of plural ways of living, feeling, knowing, and being.

It is deeply moving to witness unity literally in motion, with everyone working tirelessly for a living Amazon and honoring its diverse peoples and cultures. It became clear that no one saves anyone else, nor does anyone save themselves alone; we truly need each other. We need a committed academia, radical church movements standing firm for the transformation of a model that exploits bodies and territories, and civil society organizations that vibrate with life, embracing their role of support rather than usurping the voices of those who dwell there. We need organized women and youth grounding their agendas, Indigenous Peoples constantly demonstrating dignity and a deep, harmonious kinship with Mother Earth, and resilient, joyful Quilombolas and afrodescendents communities bringing a stubborn hope through their words and actions. We need Amazonian city dwellers, artistic collectives, environmental organizations, producer associations… In moments like these, we know that by coming together, we can save the Amazon.

Faced with the multiple problems confronting the peoples and ecosystems of the region—and the world—we require diverse and coordinated struggles from different perspectives. In particular, our emphasis on this occasion, together with members and allies of our coalition, was focused on strengthening alliances and joint actions to curb the impact of industrial agribusiness and livestock production, as well as on promoting alternatives to these practices.

The conversion of forests and jungles to make way for new cattle grazing areas and crops such as soy, corn, and oil palm is the main cause of the accelerated loss of vegetation cover. Evidence is alarming; according to a 2023 report from the Amazon Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information Network (RAISG) and the MapBiomas network, three out of every four hectares deforested in the Amazon over the last four decades have been used for cattle ranching, which accounts for 75% of accumulated deforestation. This figure becomes even more significant when we consider that, of the approximately 86 million hectares (Mha) of natural vegetation deforested between 1985 and 2022 in the Amazon region, 66.5 Mha were converted into pastureland, while of the additional 19.4 million hectares used for agricultural purposes, a large proportion is used for the production of soy or corn, inputs which are then used to feed the same livestock industry.

Unsustainable Livestock Production is Extractivism

During a self-organized event, co-convened by GFC, our members CEDENMA, Brighter Green, and CIPCA, together with Acción Ecológica and GRAIN, we were able to hear diverse perspectives on these impacts in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia,Brazil and throughout Latin America. Among the key issues were: the serious harm caused by industrial livestock and soy production to Indigenous and peasant communities, which jeopardizes entire worldviews by affecting rivers, soils, and spiritual practices, and which generates sick, sad, displaced bodies and corporate memories; the links between industrial livestock and paramilitarism and drug trafficking in countries like Colombia; the strategies of persecution, harassment, and co-optation deployed by companies and governments against land defenders; the foreign ownership of land and water; the persistent dependence on an export-oriented extractive model; and, in short, the predatory practices of the livestock industry. All of this led us to recognize,along with around 24 organizations participating in this and other activities convened by this same group, that unsustainable livestock is in essence a core form of extractivism, placed on the exact same predatory footing as oil drilling and large mining.

This statement was ratified in the FOSPA Action Plan, which must guide coordinated actions until the holding of its XIII version in Colombia in 2028: “Industrial animal production is one of the main drivers of deforestation, pollution, and land grabbing, as well as human rights violations, and it is a form of extractivism that threatens our territories and ecosystems.” 

Just as there are vehement struggles against oil exploitation and mining extraction, if we want to make the future possible again in the world and in the Amazon, we must add to these necessary battles those aimed at containing the expansion of agribusiness, largely concentrated around industrial livestock farming. These insights from FOSPA directly reinforce our core campaigns and policy positions. GFC has long advocated against false solutions to climate change and exposed the devastating drivers of deforestation and forest degradation. The lessons learned in Puyo validate our strategic focus on challenging corporate-led industrial livestock and agro-industrial models as central pillars of our work on just transitions.

FOSPA 2026. GFC

Environmental justice cannot be achieved while trade agreements, international financing, and corporate supply chains continue to reward land grabbing and ecosystem destruction under the guise of “feed security” or “green growth.” We take away from FOSPA a reinforced mandate to strengthen internationalist solidarity, bridge local community resistance with global policy advocacy, and amplify the voices of women, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities who champion genuine, rights-based alternatives such as agroecology, food sovereignty, and community forest management.

The challenges facing the Amazon and our global climate are immense, but FOSPA did not leave us paralyzed by the prospect of ecological collapse. Instead, it filled us with a deep sense of agency, hope, and concrete collective action.

“¡Si nos juntamos, los atajamos!” (If we band together, we stop them!)

The path forward lies in our unity. As the inspiring rallying cry echoed through the streets of Puyo. We are not the generations destined to watch the Amazon die in a slow, agonizing collapse. We are the generations choosing to stand together, bridging local resistance with global solidarity, to heal our relationship with the Earth and secure a vibrant, living future for all.

The following article was adapted from The Story of Urban Planning by Ivis García and Jason Holt (Caracara Press, 2026), which tells planning history as one connected narrative rather than a set of disconnected movements. Available in print and ebook.

When states were first deciding where their interstates should go in the years right after the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Bureau of Public Roads worked from a route-selection standard that more or less came down to this: 

Choose the route that minimizes construction cost, maximizes traffic capacity, and connects the urban core to the suburban ring in the least travel time.

When we read this sentence today, it’s not hard to see where we went wrong. 

At the time, the cheapest land in an American city sat in older, denser, lower-income neighborhoods: the same ones urban renewal was already clearing for the same reason. The path of least political resistance ran through communities with the least capacity to fight a federal program backed by billions of dollars and every state highway department in the country. 

No one had to name a target. The criteria did the selecting, in dozens of unrelated cities, with a consistency no individual decision can explain.

The idea that there’s one “villain” in the story of how the interstates were built is more satisfying, and more comforting, because villains can be defeated and then they are gone. Robert Moses, the unelected official who ran New York’s major public works for more than three decades, routed the Cross Bronx Expressway straight through dense Bronx neighborhoods. He lost his power in 1968 and died in 1981. 

Criteria, by contrast, do not die. They get reauthorized.

That’s not to say Moses didn’t have a harmful impact, or that his specific reasoning isn’t worth reading closely. For the Cross Bronx Expressway he had an alternative, a route slightly south through industrial land that would have taken fewer occupied buildings and displaced fewer families. He knew it existed. He chose the northern route anyway. 

Robert Caro, whose 1974 biography of Moses, “The Power Broker,” remains the standard account of his work, went through that decision in detail and found no tidy explanation. He noted just that Moses did not revisit a route once he had committed to it, and that objections from the people in the path carried little weight with him. Construction ran fifteen years, and estimates of the number of displaced along the seven miles run from forty thousand to sixty thousand people.

What followed was a loop rather than a single catastrophe. The elevated structure made the streets beside it loud, which made them less desirable, which moved out the families who could afford to move, which thinned the tax base, which thinned the services, which made the neighborhood less desirable still. The South Bronx of the 1970s had many authors. The expressway concentrated them in one place and sped them up.

The same arithmetic ran everywhere. In Nashville, Interstate 40 took 650 homes and 27 apartment buildings on the North Side, split a self-sufficient Black commercial district in two, and survived a federal court challenge brought by residents and Fisk University.

Read about the “freeway revolts,” the neighborhood campaigns that fought urban highway routes as soon as they were announced and stopped them outright in cities from San Francisco to Baltimore, and you’ll find people who understood this better than the profession did. 

Their argument was not against highways. It was about criteria: that the traffic benefit was smaller than the models claimed, the damage to the urban fabric never appeared on the ledger at all, and the people in the path held an interest the process had no way to count. Those freeway fighters were right about the models. Urban highways induce the traffic they are built to carry, filling to capacity as the access they provide encourages more driving.

Those criteria have followed us into the present. Houston is the clearest case running today. 

The North Houston Highway Improvement Project will take 168 single-family homes, 1,067 apartment units, 331 businesses employing nearly 25,000 people, four houses of worship, and two schools. Through downtown, the right of way grows from 220 feet to 570 feet. The cost has gone from about seven billion dollars to thirteen billion, with completion now projected around 2040. The engineering is better than anything available in the 1950s. The ledger still has no column for a congregation that loses the building it worships in.

That is what the spine of my book, The Story of Urban Planning, is drawn from. In chapter after chapter, planners identify a real problem, act on it with the best tools and knowledge their era hands them, and solve it. Then the solution becomes the problem which the next generation inherits. 

Which brings me to the part that should trouble everyone reading this, including me. Reforms outlive their moment the same way criteria do. The public review processes built to curb the harms of highways are now the ones used to stop projects that would make cities better. 

The freeway revolts won a real victory in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962, which required a continuing, comprehensive and cooperative planning process, and in the participation requirements that followed. Those requirements worked. They also became the instrument that now blocks the apartment building, the bus lane, and the infill housing that would take pressure off the fringe. The same tool, pointed at different targets, now protects the status quo instead of the people in the path. 

That is not an argument for taking public participation away. It is an argument that we reformed the process and left the criteria alone, which made it harder to build everything instead of harder to build the wrong thing. Sixty years later, we are still optimizing travel time and still counting displacement as an acquisition cost.

Ask what your region’s decision rule rewards. Then ask what it has no way to count. That second list is where the damage happens. 

• Two of the three most expensive highway projects in the U.S. — the Rose Quarter widening and Interstate Bridge Project — are in Portland. Along with rebuilding the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, they cost more than $2 billion per mile. Others include projects in New Jersey, Louisiana, Washington, California, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Connecticut. (City Observatory)
• Lifted pickups an rampant speed racing are signs of the MAGA-fication of roadways, (The Guardian).
• About 40 bikeshare trips take the equivalent of one car’s worth of pollution out of the atmosphere, according to a study by Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University.
• Andrew Miller says that transit agencies haven’t adjusted to shifting post-COVID travel patterns; they should be adding service for popular weekend events like sports games and concerts, and focusing less on rush-hour commutes, which never came all the way back. (Changing Lanes)
• The Environmental Defense Fund shares lessons from the successful fight for congestion pricing in Manhattan.
• Florida passenger rail company Brightline is preparing to enter bankruptcy. (Bloomberg)
• Facing deficits topping $100 million, San Diego could eliminate a third of its bus routes and cut service on another third. (Union-Tribune)
• After pulling his support for light rail on the Atlanta Beltline, Mayor Andre Dickens now says he’ll release a funding plan by the end of the year. (Saporta Report)
• Charlotte is growing fast, but it’s still not acting like a big city in terms of transportation infrastructure. (Ledger)
• Despite a complete streets project on Park Avenue in Memphis, residents say it’s still too dangerous to walk on. (Fox 13)
• Sound Transit opened a new light rail station five years ahead of schedule. (KIRO)
• Tampa is offering free concerts on the TECO streetcar every fourth Friday through May. (Creative Loafing)
• Ithaca and hundreds of other cities organize “porch fest” music festivals in walkable neighborhoods. (CNU Public Square)

Registered nurses at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine, voted overwhelmingly tonight to join Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of National Nurses United, the largest and fastest-growing registered nurse (RN) union in the nation. In an election held today, September 24, nurses voted 91 percent yes to forming a union.

Waymo LLC, operator of San Francisco’s ubiquitous robotaxis, announced a “Transit Rewards” program Tuesday for the Bay Area. Under the program, Waymo users who also ride transit will get a discount. From the company’s release:

To participate, riders will link their Visa card in the Waymo app. When riders in the SF Bay Area use their Visa card to take a Waymo trip and public transit within 2 hours of each other, we will automatically issue $2.85 in Waymo Cash, which is the cost of a bus fare in San Francisco.

Alongside the launch of our transit rewards program, we’re also announcing a partnership with Caltrain, which accepts tap-to-pay. Waymo will lease 40 dedicated Caltrain station parking spaces to better serve transit riders with staged vehicles. This is a model we hope to replicate with additional transit agencies, ultimately enabling more seamless connections between Waymo’s service and public transit.

“During the pilot, we will evaluate any improved connections to and from the stations,” said Dan Lieberman, spokesperson for Caltrain. “We welcome efforts that encourage transit use and make it easier for people to choose Muni as part of their everyday trips,” said SFMTA spokesperson Michael Roccaforte.

That all sounds nice—why not offer transit riders a robotaxi to solve the “last mile” problem between a transit station and their origin or destination? But Bay Area advocates were skeptical.

“I suspect one of Waymo’s goals here is to create a permission structure for local politicians, one in which they can feel justified when they decide to not do the hard work to improve their local public transit agencies,” wrote San Francisco transit advocate Cyrus Hall. “Look! We’re part of the transit system!”

“Even with a discount, the rideshare services are much more expensive than transit, and lots of single-occupant vehicles cause traffic congestion,” Seamless Bay Area’s Adina Levin told Streetsblog.

Waymo raised the ire of transit and cycling advocates last year when it successfully lobbied the city to allow its vehicles on supposedly “car-free” Market Street. It’s unclear how Waymo can be a “complementary mobility ecosystem” on Market Street, San Francisco’s main thoroughfare, which is already served by the Muni Subway, BART, and several bus and streetcar routes. Advocates stressed that any additional cars, Waymos included, invariably slow buses and streetcars on Market and increase the risk to cyclists and pedestrians.

“Robot cars and ride-hail pull people away from public transportation in addition to increasing car trips,” said Streets Forward’s Luke Bornheimer. “That’s been shown over and over again.”

That said, on a regional level, as with conventional taxis and rideshare, it could still be a helpful last-mile solution. “Outside central cities where transit is less frequent and has shorter hours, even people who rely on transit sometimes benefit from ride-hail services,” said Levin. “The other day I took BART to Oakland and realized that I had gone to the wrong station and the bus would not get to my destination in time. I took an Uber for the last two miles.”

A confused Waymo got stuck in a group bicycle ride and blocked the N Judah tracks on the Duboce Avenue last January. Photo: Streetsblog/Rudick

But advocates weren’t buying that Waymo can be an integral part of the transit system any more than conventional taxis and ride-hail. “Make no mistake, this is a nice benefit if you’re wealthy enough to regularly use Waymo,” said Hall. “But spending ~$15-20 per ride twice a day to get to Caltrain is not affordable or sustainable transportation for everyone, $2.85 discount or not.”

“Community members and our region benefit most from well-funded, frequent, reliable public transit, and policies that encourage sustainable transportation with seamless mobility including first and last mile solutions,” added Levin. “We think about it like the food pyramid, where transit, walking, biking and rolling are the basis of a sustainable transportation diet, and ride-hail services have a place when used more sparingly.”

The Transit Rewards program applies to all 27 San Francisco Bay Area transit agencies that accept direct, contactless payment. Waymo plans to roll out similar transit discount programs in other cities where they operate.

A formal complaint has been made against the Environment Agency (EA) over the way it has handled plans for gas drilling and lower-volume fracking at Burniston in North Yorkshire.

Campaign poster in Burniston. Photo: DrillOrDrop

The complaint, by campaigner Dennis May, said the EA had provided “inaccurate, inconsistent and contradictory information”.

He called for the withdrawal of the current consultation on a draft decision by the EA to grant an environmental permit for the site.

He also said there should be a review of onshore oil and gas permitting in England and the EA should establish scientific definitions that were then universally applied.

The EA has been criticised locally and nationally for the Burniston draft decision document, published on 3 August 2026.

Yesterday, Friends of the Earth formally objected to the decision. Last week, DrillOrDrop reported on concerns that the draft decision document contained errors, uncertainty and missing information.

This morning, the EA announced on its website that the Burniston permit consultation, due to end on 26 September 2026, would close instead 25 days later on 21 October 2026. There was no explanation about why the consultation had been extended.

DrillOrDrop asked the EA why it had delayed the closing date. We have received no response.

“Not acting in the public interest”

Mr May, a member of the Nottinghamshire campaign group Frack Free Misson, accused the EA of failing to act in the public interest and of regarding the public consultation as “a mere formality, irrespective of evidence”.

In his complaint, submitted last week, he said:

“The EA has conveyed inaccurate, inconsistent and contradictory information to the public.”

He said the EA had “aligned with misleading, confected, and conflated terminology employed by the applicant”, Europa Oil & Gas plc.

He also said the EA had failed to remain impartial and had “fallen short of its stated aims to provide information correctly, clearly and in a professional manner”.

Mr May added:

“It is disappointing a statutory regulator has allowed the applicant to set the standard of its discourse with the public. In this, the EA could be seen as acting under the influence of lobbyists and thereby not in the public interest.”

He concluded:

“It is a reasonable expectation for a statutory regulator to demonstrate a consistent and structured scientific approach to the processes it oversees; such is clearly not evident in this case. A recognisable and structured taxonomy, containing terms with robust definitions is a primary requirement.

“Given this evidence, the current consultation should be withdrawn while a review of onshore oil and gas permitting is conducted, with the aim of establishing robust, scientific definitions and parameters, set by the regulator and universally applied.”

The Environment Agency has said it will respond to the complaint within 20 working days (approximately 16 October 2026). DrillOrDrop will report on the response.

Details

Mr May’s complaint focuses on three main areas:

Inconsistent and contradictory information

The complaint gave examples from the draft decision document and draft permit including:

• Contradictory information on the type of hydraulic fracturing fluid to be used
• Contradictory information on which formations would be fracked
• Misidentification of the purpose and targets of the permit application
• Inconsistent and contradictory use of terms to explain the proposed fracking process

Mr May said:

“Such a lack of accuracy and precision in terms of identifying both target formations and the nature of the fracturing fluid is a failure to correctly and professionally convey the most basic of information, a fundamental requirement of any public agency.”

Incorrect and misleading information

The complaint said the draft decision document and draft permit contained incorrect and vague terminology. It said:

“EA propagated and/or failed to amend both incorrect and misleading information regarding the scale of intended operations along with a misconception of the terms ‘conventional’ and ‘unconventional.’”

It accused the EA of being “party to a PR exercise, a role which a statutory regulator should not be involved in”. The complaint added:

“The use of vague, undefined terms is unscientific and thereby inappropriate.”

Mr May said:

“The granting of permits should be undertaken impartially, in a logical, scientific and evidence-based manner. Appropriate terminology should also be framed around a recognisable taxonomy so based, not adopted to suit the whims of an applicant’s PR campaign. To do otherwise could compromise the EA’s position in enforcement proceedings.”

Lack of definition and denial

The complaint also said the EA’s responses to an earlier consultation, summarised in the draft decision document, continued to “perpetuate the lack of definition, misleading information and denial that the target formations are unconventional”.

Mr May said this included:

• Lack of distinction between well and reservoir stimulation
• Arbitrary use of the term proppant squeeze across well and reservoir stimulation
• Claims that seismicity [earthquakes] occurred in previous shale fracks because of the use of “far higher injection volumes” compared to what is proposed at Burniston

On the third example, Mr May said this was not based on fact because the quantities proposed at Burniston were similar stage volumes to those used in fracking at Cuadrilla’s PNR2 well in Lancashire in 2019 that led to earthquakes and a moratorium on associated hydraulic fracturing in England.

He said the EA had:

“adopted a position whereby it is relying upon what has proven to be ineffective shale gas legislation, with thresholds which have never been attained, as a datum upon which to base its assessment of risk.”

EA under fire

The Burniston complaint is the second current challenge to the EA on its permit process in the onshore oil and gas sector in England.

In East Yorkshire, another campaigner, Peter Lomas, is seeking a judicial review of the decision by the EA to grant a permit variation allowing lower-volume fracking at the West Newton-A site.

Yesterday, we reported that Mr Lomas had also applied to the High Court for an interim injunction to stop the fracking operation at West Newton until his legal challenge with the EA had been decided.

DENVER—A new analysis by the Center for Western Priorities found that 99.0 percent of the 134,312 public comments posted on the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) proposed revision of the Travel Management Rule oppose the Trump administration’s plan. The 30-day comment period closed September 23.

USFS manages more than 380,000 miles of roads and 165,000 miles of trails. The 2005 Travel Management Rule requires national forests to designate the roads, trails, and areas open to motor vehicles and keeps other routes closed. The proposed revision to the rule would reverse that, presuming existing roads, trails, airfields, and other access routes are open to motorized vehicles by default unless a closure is required by law or justified by documented resource, safety, use-conflict, or maintenance concerns. It would also require annual review of every closed or highly restricted route, and allow aerial imagery to serve as evidence that a route existed. It also proposes new rules for e-bike use and off-route motor vehicle use for big-game retrieval, firewood collection, and dispersed camping.

Key findings:

• 99.0 percent of posted comments opposed the revision

• 0.4 percent supported it

• 0.6 percent were neutral or off-topic

• Of the 0.4 percent of comments supporting the revision, nearly a third supported it solely because of the proposal to reclassify Class 1 e-bikes as non-motorized vehicles

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Creative Content and Policy Manager Lilly Bock-Brownstein, who performed the analysis:

“Once again, Americans have shown up in overwhelming numbers to oppose reckless actions on public lands. The Trump administration asked the public whether every road and trail in our national forests should be open to motorized vehicles by default, and the answer was a resounding no.

“There are places where motorized vehicles belong and places they don’t. The American public clearly gets it. But the Trump administration either doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care.”

The results align with earlier CWP analyses that found universal opposition to the Trump administration’s public lands rollbacks. In September 2025, more than 99 percent of approximately 183,000 comments opposed repealing the Roadless Rule. In November 2025, 98 percent of comments opposed rescinding the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule. The Forest Service is currently accepting public comments on the proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, which protects the more than 44 million acres of national forest land outside of Colorado and Idaho, where state-specific roadless rules apply. The agency extended that comment period deadline to October 6. Comments can be submitted on regulations.gov.

Methodology:

CWP downloaded all 134,312 comments posted to docket FS-2026-0100 on regulations.gov as of September 24, 2026, 07:57 AM MT. Each comment was classified as supporting, opposing, or neutral/off-topic using a combination of keyword matching and a large language model. CWP staff manually audited the labels on a random sample of 300 comments, which oversampled for “support” and “neutral/off-topic” comments. The audit revealed a labeling accuracy rate estimated at 99.9 percent accurate.

Learn more:

• Trump wants to open nearly all national forest trails to dirt bikes and ATVs — Grist

• Off-roading on federal lands in Colorado could expand with expected Trump reversal — The Colorado Sun

• USFS’s own analysis shows Roadless Rule repeal would harm wildlife, water, and rural communities — Westwise

• Comment analysis finds over 99% opposition to repealing 2001 Roadless Rule — Center for Western Priorities

The post STATEMENT: New analysis finds 99.0 percent of public comments oppose Travel Management Rule rewrite appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Sure, trees and flowers are great, but tucked between them is another plant just as crucial for birds and worthy of your yard space: The humble and life-giving shrub.But what exactly is a shrub...

Senators are looking toward the Capitol doors as they prepare to head home and campaign for the midterms. Meanwhile, a group of them has been scrambling to reach a deal that some analysts believe is critical to meet the country’s energy needs. 

A bipartisan group of senators says it has come closer than ever before to reaching a long-desired permitting reform bill, which would make it easier to build new energy projects. Many consider the issue urgent as electricity demand surges across the country, partly because of the tech industry’s massive build-out of data centers. 

“America’s energy demand is surging due to advanced technology and manufacturing, but our outdated federal permitting process remains a massive barrier to building the infrastructure we need to stay competitive,” said Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee, in an August press release.

But the bill’s reception among the public is uncertain due in part to a PR problem: Data centers are a “toxic” subject for voters, according to Alex Lundry, president of D.C.-based public opinion research firm Redbud Consulting. In recent polls, Democrats, Republicans, and independents strongly oppose data centers being built in their communities. 

“If you phrase permitting reform as serving data centers, the polling results get way worse,” Lundry said. This is putting legislators, many of whom are up for reelection in November, in a bind: They want to make it easier to build more electrical infrastructure, which facilitates the data center boom, but don’t want voters to think it’s about data centers. 

The potential bill represents one of the few points of agreement for Republicans and Democrats in Washington, which is that energy permitting is broken.

Complicated studies on project impacts, lengthy reviews by different federal agencies, and legal battles from environmental groups and project opponents constantly delay all kinds of energy projects, industry leaders say.

Lawmakers have tried for years to reform the permitting process, most recently with the failed Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, which made it out of committee but never got a full Senate vote. Now, lawmakers from both parties say growing power demand has given the new attempt more momentum than any previous effort. The highest-ranking members of both parties in the Senate’s two energy-related committees are negotiating the bill’s language.

President Donald Trump has signaled he would stop blocking renewable energy projects in order to entice Democrats toward a deal on the bill. Democrats have worried that even if they make it easier to build renewables in law, the White House could continue making it impossible in practice, with some Democrats indicating that these worries have stalled the bill’s progress. 

“I appreciate very much what the Trump administration has done to move in this direction, but in order to brief colleagues on what this really means, we need just a bit more clarity on exactly what return to regular order for wind and solar projects looks like,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told reporters this week. “So that’s still to be done, but that I think can happen in fairly short order,” 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, is one of four primary negotiators on a long-sought permitting reform bill in the Senate. Tom Williams / Getty

Politico reported that the senators intend to finish hammering out the bill after the midterm elections, when it could compete with other legislation for attention, especially if Republicans lose control of Congress.

The draft bill’s contents are not public, but stakeholders expect it would make building energy projects easier by reducing the potential environmental and social effects of a project that government agencies must consider when issuing a permit; loosening Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act requirements that slow down transmission line and pipeline permits; and making successfully obtained permits less vulnerable to lawsuits after they’re issued. 

Such a bill would ease the path to construction for renewable and fossil fuel projects alike — especially solar and natural gas, the power sources with the most momentum. Solar power and batteries account for almost 80 percent of the new power generation expected to be built in the United States in 2026, while natural gas was the largest single source of electricity used in 2025, with projections for continued growth. Natural gas in particular has become a go-to power source for data centers, which are projected to use a lot of it in the next decade. 

Unsurprisingly, both the solar and the gas industries support permitting reform. Tim Pawlenty, president of the Solar Energy Industry Association, has said the country would be “constipated” without it.

A colossal surge in electricity demand has long been expected in the United States, even before Big Tech started its data center build-out. Americans are “electrifying” their lives with heat pumps, electrical appliances, and electric vehicles, all important for reducing emissions. The country has also squeezed most of the benefits out of energy-saving lightbulbs and other fixtures, which had kept electricity use flat by reducing power needs as they spread during the 2010s. Added to all that, the United States aims to draw more manufacturing to its shores, which requires electricity if successful. But data centers are accelerating and intensifying the power-demand spike, and straining grids and supply chains. Data center developers like Google have helped lobby for permitting reform.

Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council want to speed up renewable energy development without weakening bedrock environmental laws; NRDC executives have called for land-use plans that make it easier to site renewable energy projects while protecting local ecosystems. But Democratic legislators are considering compromising on environmental protections to support renewable energy and keep grids reliable. Meanwhile, Republicans, many of whom deny the severity of climate change, want to power new economic growth.

There is another reason legislators in both parties are keen to build, build, build: Many are anxious that hobbling data centers, and the AI systems they enable, will allow China to become economically and militarily stronger than the United States. Trump administration officials, legislators from both parties, and energy industry leaders speaking at the Clean Energy Week conference in Washington, D.C., in mid-September called on America to be “competitive” and “dominant” through energy build-out. 

“While Communist China cuts corners to get ahead, a mountain of red tape has America fighting the energy war with one hand tied behind our backs,” said Senator Rick Scott, a Republican, in a statement last month.

But Lundry, the pollster, warned that these sentiments are losing popularity among voters. “Being competitive with China used to be an effective message, but it isn’t anymore,” Lundry said. 

Instead, Lundry recommended framing permitting reform as a boost for clean power. Lundry’s firm, Redbud, found in a September poll that 71 percent of respondents agreed that “making renewable energy a bigger part of the country’s energy supply is the right move.” Bringing down energy costs is also likely a big win with voters, the survey showed, with 70 percent of respondents saying their energy bills have gone up in the last year.

Action in the other house of Congress makes it clear that lawmakers are well aware of the public’s antipathy toward data centers and fear about rising energy costs. A few days before senators said they were nearly finished with their permitting draft, the House of Representatives passed a bill calling on states (but not requiring them) to force data centers to pay for their own electricity generation. The bill is meant to help shield regular people from rising bills as data centers gobble up power. That bill is now stalled in the Senate, where some Democrats say it’s too soft-handed.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Gas, solar, and tech companies all want this bill. Will Congress pass it? on Sep 24, 2026.

Open access notables

The Increasing Incidence of Boreal and Western U.S. Forest Wildfires and Its Causes: An Overview, Wallace et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

This overview of the voluminous wildfire literature addresses the following questions: “How seriously is the current spate of wildfires impacting the boreal forests and the forests of the western United States? Is the current rate of burning of these forests unprecedented? Has it been systematically increasing over the past few decades and, if so, is it in response to human-induced global warming?” The article contains diagrams and tables based on a suite of fire-related datasets: satellite measurements of burned area, fire-related carbon emissions, aerosol optical depth, dating back to around the year 2000, and longer ground-based records of area burned by fires in the western United States. The graphics and tables reveal the remarkable extent of the forested area burned. The average area burned per year has increased by roughly a factor of three since the year 2000. The area burned by severe fires with areas > 100 km2 has been increasing more rapidly than the area burned by smaller fires. Wildfire smoke has also increased appreciably over much of North America. Forested burned area and fire-related carbon emissions are highly sensitive to measures of aridity on time scales ranging from days to decades. Aridity has increased, mainly in response to the warming trend, which is comparable in magnitude to that in climate model simulations of the response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations. The evidence presented herein supports the widely held belief that the recent increase in wildfires is mainly due to human-induced global warming.

Net Groundwater Recharge in California Occurs Primarily During Above-Average Snowpack Years, Reager et al., Geophysical Research Letters

In a new application of GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite observations, we estimate basin-scale net groundwater recharge rates for the combined Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Tulare basins encompassing California's Central Valley aquifer. Net recharge is calculated as the temporal derivative of groundwater storage anomalies and compared with precipitation and snow water equivalent over a fixed study area. Net positive recharge is rare, occurring in only six water years since 2004, and is consistently associated with years of above-average Sierra Nevada snowpack. Across the observational record, net positive recharge is observed only in years when snow water equivalent exceeds approximately 21 km3 (17 MAF; ∼121% of the 20-year mean value), with the largest recharge event coinciding with the exceptionally wet winter of water year 2023. These results suggest that above-average snowpack conditions, rather than rainfall alone, are an important enabling condition for basin-scale groundwater recharge under a warming climate.

Concurrent Eurasian Heatwaves Will Intensify Beyond the Mean Warming, Xu et al., Geophysical Research Letters

Heatwaves occurring at the same time over Europe and North China are among the most common simultaneous climate extremes in the Northern Hemisphere. These events are linked by a large-scale atmospheric circulation pattern, the British–Baikal Corridor pattern, which produces high-pressure systems over both regions simultaneously. Using a large ensemble of climate model simulations, we find that these concurrent heatwaves will become much more severe in the future. Importantly, they intensify faster than average temperature increases due to global warming. Even after accounting for background warming, temperatures during these events exceed the regional mean warming by about 0.3°C on average and by more than 0.5°C locally. Surprisingly, the reasons for this additional intensification differ between the two regions. Over North China, the atmospheric circulation pattern strengthens, bringing clearer skies and greater solar heating. Over Europe, however, the circulation pattern weakens, but heatwaves still intensify because drier soils provide less evaporative cooling. These findings challenge the common assumption that the same weather pattern amplifies heat equally wherever it occurs. They also suggest that future heat risks may be underestimated if assessments rely only on average warming, particularly when heatwaves strike multiple regions simultaneously.

Defending the status quo: The role of system justification in public opposition to ambitious climate policy and energy system change, Lloyd et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology

In recent years, environmental psychologists have argued that our field must conduct more solutions-focussed and system-level research if we want to contribute to ambitious and effective climate action. In this paper, we propose that system justification offers a promising pathway towards achieving both of these goals, and investigate its influence on three societally-impactful outcomes: support for climate policy, support for a just energy transition, and endorsement of climate delay discourses. We also test whether experimentally inducing hope could offer a solution to these proposed deleterious effects. We conduct this research in small-to-medium sized communities in Western Canada, many of which are dependent upon fossil-fuels for their continued existence, and thus strongly oppose decarbonization. Using an online survey of these communities (N = 3,400) we find that system justification consistently predicts lower support for climate policies, greater endorsement of climate delay discourses, and lower support for a just energy transition. Additionally, moderation analyses reveal that this relationship is stronger for those with greater proximity to the fossil-fuel industry, and that our hope manipulation had no effect. We explore the policy implications of these findings, arguing that policymakers should (1) aim to narratively detach the status quo from the economic system, and (2) design just transitions policies which act to maintain fossil-fuel communities’ current way of life, rather than trying to improve it. These findings extend system justification theory to three new societally-impactful outcomes; demonstrate its utility for policymaking; and highlight its potential to contribute to transformation-oriented research in environmental psychology.

From this week's government/NGO section:

Findings from a 2026 Survey of Adults Age 18 and Older, Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

The authors found that 53% of Americans are extremely or very concerned about the environmental effects of AI, up from 41% who said the same in 2025. Younger adults ages 18-29 have become particularly concerned, increasing from 38% last year to 60% today and moving from levels similar to other age groups to the highest level of concern. Forty-seven percent of Americans think AI will do more to hurt rather than help the environment, up from 33% who said the same in 2025. The authors also explored attitudes toward climate change, energy policy, and electric vehicles (EVs). Most Americans agree that climate change is happening and is caused by human activity, a trend that has remained stable in recent years. There is a large partisan divide in these attitudes, however, with Democrats more likely than Republicans to believe climate change is occurring (92% vs. 55%) and is caused mostly by human activity (68% vs. 34%). About 2 in 3 believe that oil and gas companies, the federal government, and large businesses and corporations have a lot of responsibility to address climate change, while just 4 in 10 say the same about developing countries and individual people.

In Hottest Summer on Record, 2 in 3 Americans Say Climate Change Is Increasing Heat-Related Illnesses, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania

Nearly two-thirds of the American public say climate change is increasing the risk of respiratory diseases and heat- and insect-related illnesses. The author's survey, which was conducted Aug. 4-17, 2026, among 1,904 empaneled U.S. adults, found that 76% report that extreme outdoor heat affected their daily activities at least sometimes in the past year and 38% say poor air quality resulting from wildfire smoke did so. Extreme heat is affecting the everyday lives of most Americans. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) say that climate change is increasing the risk of heat-related illnesses, respiratory diseases, and insect-borne diseases. This is unchanged from August 2025 (65%) and July 2024 (67%) but is significantly higher than 58% in November 2023. Americans generally recognize that heat waves are on the rise. Nearly two-thirds (62%) say U.S. heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense than in the past, statistically unchanged from 61% in August 2025, 65% in July 2024, and 58% in November 2023. Of the four extreme weather events measured in the survey, more Americans report that their daily activities were impacted at least sometimes by extreme outdoor heat (76%) and poor air quality resulting from wildfire smoke (38%). As one would expect, fewer say they were impacted at least sometimes by flooding (20%) and tornadoes/hurricanes (11%), since these events are less frequent. 87 articles in 46 journals by 618 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Amplified Cloud-Phase Responses Over Global Mountain Regions Under Climate Warming, Zhang et al., AGU Advances Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026av002380

Anthropogenic Warming Weakens Mild Offshore Winds in Southern California but Not the Extreme Fire-Weather Winds, Madakumbura et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026ef008422

Emerging Divergence Between Dry- and Humid-Heat in China Under Weakening Temperature-Humidity Coupling, Zhu et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres 10.1029/2026jd046959

Future Reduction of North Pacific Subtropical Mode Water: Its Impacts on Physical and Biogeochemical Conditions in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Sugimoto, Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2026jc024776

On the Timescales of Atmospheric Adjustments to Contrail Cirrus Formation, Quarroz et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl125935

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
A holistic platform for accelerating sorbent-based carbon capture, Nature, 10.1038/s41586-024-07683-8 95 cites.

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Observations of climate change, effects

Earthquake-triggered cascading hazards under Arctic amplification, Melo et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2617210123

Long-term weakening of extreme cold stress in eastern China, Li et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2026.100960

Observational Evidence for Accelerated Warming and Salinification Propagating Into the Deep Mediterranean, Terzi? & Vilibi?, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl124518

Spatiotemporal variations in snowline altitude across the High Mountain Asia from 1990 to 2024 Based on Landsat Data, Wang et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.09.007

The Increasing Incidence of Boreal and Western U.S. Forest Wildfires and Its Causes: An Overview, Wallace et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 10.1175/bams-d-25-0193.1

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Sketching the spatial disparities in heatwave trends by changing atmospheric teleconnections in the Northern Hemisphere, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-52254-0 42 cites.

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Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects

A deep learning framework for gridding daily climate variables from a sparse station network, Dumitrescu, Geoscientific model development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-19-8895-2026

Attribution estimates for similar extremes are robust across event definitions, Otto et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-04053-2

Improving global and regional ocean heat content by consistently combining GRACE gravity, satellite altimetry and Argo profile observations in a joint inversion framework, Uebbing et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-6945-2026

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Are Our Climate Data Fit for Your Purpose?, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 10.1175/bams-d-23-0295.1 10 cites.

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Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects

Concurrent Eurasian Heatwaves Will Intensify Beyond the Mean Warming, Xu et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl123850

Future Redistribution of North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Risk in Two Contrasting CMIP6 Scenarios, Lele et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl123424

Projected Changes in Reference Evapotranspiration Across Indian Climate Regimes Using Bias-Corrected CMIP6 Simulations, Nayak et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.70603

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Abrupt increase in Arctic-Subarctic wildfires caused by future permafrost thaw, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-51471-x 42 cites.

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Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

A new Earth Observation–based WRF configuration for urban regional climate simulations over Paris, Kyriakidis et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-19-8709-2026

Downscaling of Temperatures Over the Eastern Mediterranean for the 21st Century, Gelman et al., International Journal of Climatology Open Access pdf 10.1002/joc.70519

New Constraint on Future Ocean Heat Uptake Revealed by Considering Model Spread of Radiative Forcing, Wu & Gregory, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl123530

The Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project (CFMIP) contribution to CMIP7, Ceppi et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-8693-2026

Using Rapid Temperature Falls to Estimate Future Strong Cold Front Frequency in CMIP6 Climate Projections, Corrales et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl124031

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
A Comprehensive Evaluation of Mean and Extreme Climate for the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM), Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 10.1175/jamc-d-24-0004.1 16 cites.

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Cryosphere & climate change

Accelerated mass loss of glaciers across Alaska since the Little Ice Age, Carrivick et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-70307-w

Cross-Basin Synergistic Effects Stall Summer Sea Ice Decline in the Chukchi Sea, Dong et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres 10.1029/2026jd047482

Enhanced Erosion Across a Transition From Continuous to Discontinuous Permafrost in Alaska, Özpolat et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007889

Feedbacks and timescales in the modelled transient response of debris-covered glaciers, Hardmeier et al., cryosphere Open Access 10.5194/tc-20-5365-2026

Modelling climate-induced instability of ice-rich permafrost slopes, Aga et al., cryosphere Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-20-5225-2026

Net Groundwater Recharge in California Occurs Primarily During Above-Average Snowpack Years, Reager et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl122396

Parameterizing tidal-water intrusions in long-term Antarctic ice-sheet projections, Juárez-Martínez et al., cryosphere Open Access 10.5194/tc-20-5345-2026

Seasonal Response of the Arctic Sea Ice to Meltwater Runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet, Liang et al., Journal of Physical Oceanography 10.1175/jpo-d-26-0025.1

Spatiotemporal variations in snowline altitude across the High Mountain Asia from 1990 to 2024 Based on Landsat Data, Wang et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2026.09.007

Temporal evolution of the Petermann Ice Shelf estuary constrained by satellite remote sensing observations, Savignano et al., cryosphere Open Access 10.5194/tc-20-5247-2026

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Lake ice quality in a warming world, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43017-024-00590-6 33 cites.

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Sea level & climate change

Anatomy of Interannual to Decadal Sea Level Changes in the GECCO3 Ocean Synthesis, Stammer et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2026jc024340

Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature, Science, 10.1126/science.adk3705 242 cites.

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Biology & climate change, related geochemistry

Climate change affects the distribution of cacti species of the genus Melocactus in the Brazilian Caatinga, Cavalcante et al., Tropical Ecology Open Access 10.1007/s42965-026-00444-w

Detection of emergent multiple predator effects in a warming world, Davidson et al., Biology Letters Open Access 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0257

Escalating Ecological Droughts Driven by Compound Soil and Atmospheric Dryness, Song et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.71102

Global Projections of Coral Reef Sediment Dissolution in the 21st Century, Yan et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl125720

GROWTH RESPONSES OF CHIHUAHUA PINE (PINUS LEIOPHYLLA) OVER 128 YEARS OF WARMING AND PRECIPITATION REGIME SHIFTS, Todd et al., Dendrochronologia Open Access 10.1016/j.dendro.2026.126614

Identifying future climate refugia in central European mountain forests, Berre et al., Journal of Ecology Open Access 10.1111/1365-2745.70439

Increasingly synchronous water limitation portends resilience declines for whitebark pine, Friedman & Germain, Dendrochronologia 10.1016/j.dendro.2026.126615

Reforestation Under Climate Change—A Cross-Regional Deadwood Retention Experiment to Develop Multifunctional Forests on Disturbed Norway Spruce Areas, Putzenlechner et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.1002/ece3.74357

Spatial Variability in Phytoplankton Response to Projected Increases in Iron and Temperature in the Ross Sea, Cristi et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026jc024364

Summer Heat Stress Downregulates Photochemistry in Coast Redwoods, Klinek et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2026jg010052

Synthesis of scale-dependent plant biodiversity change in climate warming experiments, Korell et al., Ecology Open Access 10.1002/ecy.70486

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Nonanthropocentric climate ethics, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change, 10.1002/wcc.131 72 cites.

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GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry

Abundance of Fe/Al Oxides Governs Soil Organic Carbon Stability in Wetlands Under Drying Conditions, Yao et al., Global Change Biology Open Access pdf 10.1111/gcb.71109

Climate and penguin-mediated carbon burial hotspots in coastal lakes of East Antarctica, Zhao et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105730

Forest Carbon Exchange Dynamics and Integrated Carbon Budget of a Subtropical Island Ecosystem, Han et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences 10.1029/2026jg010032

Heterogeneity in Permafrost Organic Matter Molecular Composition With Depth and Ramifications Upon Thaw in the Western Siberian Lowlands, Anderson et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences 10.1029/2026jg010169

Modeling forest soil organic carbon dynamics under seasonal freeze–thaw cycles: implications for carbon sequestration in cold-region forest ecosystems, Gao et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Open Access pdf 10.3389/ffgc.2026.1939588

Natural wetland methane emissions simulated by ICON-XPP, Wilkenskjeld et al., Biogeosciences Open Access 10.5194/bg-23-6583-2026

Net carbon losses in Central African forests revealed by high-resolution biomass change maps, Wan et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-77531-y

Nonlinear thermal responses of soil respiration temperature sensitivity under climate change, Yang et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105727

Seven-year continuous measurement of CO2 and CH4 at Atlas Mohammed V atmospheric research station in Northwest Africa, Ouchen et al., Atmospheric Environment Open Access 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2026.122365

Structural Diversity Amplifies the Effects of Functional Diversity on Forest Carbon Storage Across Stand Development, Wang et al., Global Ecology and Biogeography Open Access pdf 10.1111/geb.70309

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Emerging multiscale insights on microbial carbon use efficiency in the land carbon cycle, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-52160-5 119 cites.

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CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering

Carbon sequestration potential of tree planting under future climate scenarios in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, China, Zhao et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103128

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Feasible deployment of carbon capture and storage and the requirements of climate targets, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-02104-0 170 cites.

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Decarbonization

Flash energy droughts in solar and wind resources under climate change, Lin et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02753-3

Hydrogen Storage Technologies: Materials Innovation and System-Level Challenges for a Carbon-Neutral Future, Pranto et al., Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research Open Access 10.1002/aesr.70256

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Diverse decarbonization pathways under near cost-optimal futures, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-52433-z 43 cites.

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Geoengineering climate

Mapping justice claims for solar geoengineering, Jinnah et al., PLOS Climate Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0001054

Uneven Responses of Regional Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Turnover Time to Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, Park et al., Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) Open Access 10.5281/zenodo.21390921

Black carbon
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The politics of knowledge in black carbon mitigation: Policy entrepreneurship of Finnish actors and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, Environmental Science & Policy, 10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103881 3 cites.

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Aerosols
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Global aerosol retrieval over land from Landsat imagery integrating Transformer and Google Earth Engine, Remote Sensing of Environment, 10.1016/j.rse.2024.114404 45 cites.

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Climate change communications & cognition

Affective divisions and climate policy polarization, Bäck et al., Environmental Politics Open Access pdf 10.1080/09644016.2026.2731596

Future Before My Eyes: How Psychological Distance and Immersive Presentations Relate to Climate Emotions, Schroeder et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103213

Simple logic warnings improve climate argument evaluation across beliefs and partisanship, Bagó & Purcell, Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02754-2

Simple logic warnings improve climate argument evaluation across beliefs and partisanship, Bagó & Purcell, Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02754-2

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI, Science, 10.1126/science.adq1814 305 cites.

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Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change

Genetically engineered crops increase climate resilience of US fields, [authors did not process], Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02750-6

Historical dynamics of agricultural carbon emissions in the North China plain over the past 300 years, Ye et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1831579

Long-Term Sustainability of Direct Straw Return Challenged by Soil Carbon Saturation and Emission Trade-Offs, Liu et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.71120

Stage-Specific Associations Between Extreme Climate Events and Crop Failures Across China, Huang et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2026ef008789

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Nexus among climate change, food systems, and human health: An interdisciplinary research framework in the Global South, Environmental Science & Policy, 10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103885 23 cites.

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Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change

Future changes and drivers of socioeconomic exposure to extreme precipitation in the Huai River Basin, Jiang et al., Natural Hazards 10.1007/s11069-026-08417-x

Governance barriers to climate change adaptation in regional catchment management, Kennedy et al., Environmental Science & Policy 10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104491

Net Groundwater Recharge in California Occurs Primarily During Above-Average Snowpack Years, Reager et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl122396

The 2025–2026 Iberian Atmospheric Rivers Exhibited Moisture Transport Resembling the Early SSP5-8.5 Climate Response, Fernández-Alvarez et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl123799

Variability and response to climate change of precipitation recycling ratio in the water source conservation area of the upper Yellow River, Yang et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.109333

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Spatiotemporal patterns in persistent precipitation extremes of the Chinese mainland (1961–2022) and association with the dynamic factors, Atmospheric Research, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2024.107600 14 cites.

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Climate change economics
Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
The ocean carbon sink enhances countries’ inclusive wealth and reduces the cost of national climate policies, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01674-3 9 cites.

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Climate change mitigation public policy research

Affective divisions and climate policy polarization, Bäck et al., Environmental Politics Open Access pdf 10.1080/09644016.2026.2731596

Australian Elected Representatives Underestimate Public Support for Climate Action, Wilkinson & Klebl, Journal of Environmental Psychology Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103217

Climate action disclosure among companies: Implications for achieving global efforts to limit average global temperature rise to below 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, Shimwela et al., PLOS Climate Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000951

Defending the status quo: The role of system justification in public opposition to ambitious climate policy and energy system change, Lloyd et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology Open Access 10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103214

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Progress from Chicken Genetics to the Chicken Genome, Poultry Science, 10.1093/ps/85.12.2050 55 cites.

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Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research

Adapting the emergency management Enterprise to manage the climate emergency: a critical review, Preston et al., Climate Risk Management Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2026.100885

Cross-sectoral perspectives on strategies to address climate adaptation and health in cyclone-prone Sofala province, Mozambique, Marrufo et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2026.1912968

Governance barriers to climate change adaptation in regional catchment management, Kennedy et al., Environmental Science & Policy 10.1016/j.envsci.2026.104491

Mapping the urban heat island and climate risk in Padua (Italy): Trends in extremes and perspectives for climate justice in adaptation planning, Ceppi et al., Urban Climate Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103143

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Elevated urban energy risks due to climate-driven biophysical feedbacks, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-02108-w 37 cites.

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Climate change impacts on human health

Beyond resolution: An integrated framework for selecting climate data for urban heat-risk assessment, Shin et al., Urban Climate Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103150

Climate Informed Dengue Prediction and Future Risk Under a Changing Monsoon Climate in Kerala, India, Yacob & Koll, Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) Open Access 10.5281/zenodo.20096919

Heatstroke in Japan: current status, future risks, and prevention measures under a changing climate, Oka, Climate Risk Management Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.crm.2026.100887

Long-term weakening of extreme cold stress in eastern China, Li et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2026.100960

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Rising cause-specific mortality risk and burden of compound heatwaves amid climate change, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-024-02137-5 100 cites.

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Climate change & geopolitics

Mapping and quantifying engagement levels of governments in IPCC approval meetings by topic from text, Bayer et al., PLOS Climate Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0001057

Other

Climate urgency enables political alignment for Latin American power integration, Ramírez et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-026-77772-x

Dialogue framework for climate justice: bridging social and environmental justice, Thiele, Environmental Sociology 10.1080/23251042.2026.2732173

Extreme North American heatwaves in 1941 and 2021 drove widespread but contrasting impacts, Anderson & Chartrand, Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-04055-0

Internal Variability Dominates the Spatial Heterogeneity of Recent Trends in Eurasian Winter Cold Extremes, Liu et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl124591

Kinetic study of global-scale O3 pollution under 2060s climate and emission scenarios, Hata et al., Atmospheric Environment Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2026.122367

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
Climatic controls of fire activity in the red pine forests of eastern North America, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 10.1016/j.agrformet.2024.110219 7 cites.

buffer/OTHR

Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives

A global safety net for climate-risk intelligence is urgently needed, Bashir & Adil, Nature 10.1038/d41586-026-02995-3

Adaptation as a catalyst for social change, Adams et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0001052

Protecting tropical forests is more cost-effective for biodiversity and climate than restoration, Miranda et al., Science 10.1126/science.adx9928

Research Priorities for Robust Climate Assessments in the United States, Kenney et al., Earth s Future Open Access 10.1029/2025ef007336

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago:
A just world on a safe planet: a Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations, The Lancet Planetary Health, 10.1016/s2542-5196(24)00042-1 173 cites.

Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change

Making California’s Electricity Cheaper: An Affordability Agenda for the Golden State, Boyle et al., Grid Lab and Energy Innovation

More than 80% of Californians rank lowering bills as a top or important priority for state leaders, and the state’s elected officials have a duty to address these intertwined problems for their constituents. In response, the authors participated in a workshop of more than 20 California electricity experts to diagnose what is causing rising costs and develop actionable policy solutions that address the scale of the challenge. The authors were informed by but not limited by that workshop; they define a policy roadmap to stabilize and ultimately reduce electricity rates for California’s incoming governor, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the legislature, utilities, and other stakeholders, that will allow California to sustain its clean energy leadership.

Understanding the linkage between transmission deliverability and resource adequacy, Stenclik et al., GridLab and Telos Energy

The authors wanted to bridge the gap between interconnection studies and resource adequacy assessments, two processes that are deeply interrelated, but have historically been treated as separate analytical exercises. Most of the recent attention on generator interconnection has focused on interconnection costs, queue timelines, and transmission cost allocation, while the resource adequacy implications have remained largely unexamined. Despite the central role of deliverability assumptions in resource adequacy assessments, there has been limited research into whether they accurately reflect how resources perform during periods of elevated resource adequacy risk outside of narrowly defined peak-load windows. Inaccurately assumed generator deliverability can have a large affect on resource adequacy outcomes.

Assessing Electricity Resource Adequacy in Pennsylvania and PJM, Knight et al., Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission

The authors developed load projections and evaluated resource adequacy under a set of likely possible futures for PJM's grid and its' Pennsylvania service area. The authors used capacity expansion and resource adequacy scenario modeling to (a) develop projections of future resources through the long term (2040) in light of different load projections and (b) assess system reliability performance through the near term (2030) to better understand the kinds of stresses Pennsylvania’s electric system and the wider PJM grid face. Three scenarios were used. In both the Reference scenario and the High Load And Low Supply scenario, the authors found that from 2027 through 2030, the PJM planning criterion for resource adequacy (loss of load expectation or “LOLE” of 0.1) is not met by PJM. Meanwhile, in the No New Data Centers scenario, LOLE is below this 0.1 threshold.

State of Mind: Mapping Values and Climate Perceptions, Maharashtra Edition, Ek Kutumb Solutions

If technical infrastructure enables the delivery of climate solutions, relational infrastructure enables their acceptance, adoption, and endurance. It comprises the social foundations that shape whether people engage with transitions: the values they hold, the degree of agency they feel, the priorities they seek to protect, the institutions they trust, and the ways in which they make sense of change. To address this missing layer, Ek Kutumb is building the first and largest state-by-state, values-based segmentation of citizens in India. The research seeks to surface the deeply held values and perceptions of climate change, along with experiences of agency, priorities, and trust factors that shape how people respond to climate-related issues and interventions. The first state examined is Maharashtra. Four themes emerge from the Maharashtra findings including the primacy of everyday economic pressures, a deep but locally rooted relationship with nature, broad acceptance of climate change expressed in the language of lived experience rather than scientific terminology, and a trust vacuum in which no institution has yet earned the mandate to lead on climate. The authors segment the population into seven value-based groups, each defined by a distinct configuration of core values. For each segment, they examined their relationship to family and community, as well as their understanding of the environment, climate, and institutions.

State of Global Water Resources 2025, World Meteorological Organization

The authors provide a comprehensive quantitative overview of global water resources, with a focus on hydrological variability and trends. The report's information supports countries, decision makers and stakeholders in understanding the current state of water resources, identifying areas with significant anomalies and supporting effective water management strategies. The authors found that 2025 was one of driest years for river discharge in 35 years. The past seven years have seen abnormal river flows. Water storage on Earth’s land surface has decreased in past 10 years. Widespread glacier loss occurred across all regions for the fourth consecutive year. Asia and Africa are the regions most affected by water-related disasters. Water data availability has improved, but gaps remain in hard hit areas.

State-Led Planning, Development, and Procurement, Spokas et al., Clean Air Task Force

The authors identify how establishing state-led planning and procurement can help state governments in deregulated electricity markets meet their power sector decarbonization goals and lays out the components needed to put that planning in action.

Findings from a 2026 Survey of Adults Age 18 and Older, Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

The authors found that 53% of Americans are extremely or very concerned about the environmental effects of AI, up from 41% who said the same in 2025. Younger adults ages 18-29 have become particularly concerned, increasing from 38% last year to 60% today and moving from levels similar to other age groups to the highest level of concern. Forty-seven percent of Americans think AI will do more to hurt rather than help the environment, up from 33% who said the same in 2025. The authors also explored attitudes toward climate change, energy policy, and electric vehicles (EVs). Most Americans agree that climate change is happening and is caused by human activity, a trend that has remained stable in recent years. There is a large partisan divide in these attitudes, however, with Democrats more likely than Republicans to believe climate change is occurring (92% vs. 55%) and is caused mostly by human activity (68% vs. 34%). About 2 in 3 believe that oil and gas companies, the federal government, and large businesses and corporations have a lot of responsibility to address climate change, while just 4 in 10 say the same about developing countries and individual people.

In Hottest Summer on Record, 2 in 3 Americans Say Climate Change Is Increasing Heat-Related Illnesses, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania

Nearly two-thirds of the American public say climate change is increasing the risk of respiratory diseases and heat- and insect-related illnesses. The author's survey, which was conducted Aug. 4-17, 2026, among 1,904 empaneled U.S. adults, found that 76% report that extreme outdoor heat affected their daily activities at least sometimes in the past year and 38% say poor air quality resulting from wildfire smoke did so. Extreme heat is affecting the everyday lives of most Americans. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) say that climate change is increasing the risk of heat-related illnesses, respiratory diseases, and insect-borne diseases. This is unchanged from August 2025 (65%) and July 2024 (67%) but is significantly higher than 58% in November 2023. Americans generally recognize that heat waves are on the rise. Nearly two-thirds (62%) say U.S. heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense than in the past, statistically unchanged from 61% in August 2025, 65% in July 2024, and 58% in November 2023. Of the four extreme weather events measured in the survey, more Americans report that their daily activities were impacted at least sometimes by extreme outdoor heat (76%) and poor air quality resulting from wildfire smoke (38%). As one would expect, fewer say they were impacted at least sometimes by flooding (20%) and tornadoes/hurricanes (11%), since these events are less frequent.

Energy Crossroads: Why managing fossil fuel decline is key to Australia’s green export future, Malbrain et al., WWF-Australia

The authors warn that the Australia's bid to be both a renewable energy superpower and a major fossil fuel exporter is putting its economic future at risk. This dual energy strategy is sending mixed signals to investors and trading partners just as countries across the Indo-Pacific accelerate clean energy investments. Australia could lose up to $70 billion in fossil fuel export value by 2035 as global demand shifts. Yet, findings show Australian governments still provide an estimated $20.1 billion a year in support to fossil fuels, compared with just $4.6 billion for renewable energy.

Understanding Oregon’s Data Center Industry, Wirkkala et al., Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Insight at ECOnorthwest and the University of Virginia

The authors establishes a common foundation for understanding Oregon’s data center industry. They examine the location, scale, and characteristics of existing and planned facilities; electricity and water implications; workforce and economic contributions; property taxes and incentive programs; land use and host-community characteristics; and Oregon’s position relative to selected peer markets. The analysis draws on facility-level data, confidential employment records, economic modeling, county property tax records, geospatial analysis, public utility and water-resource information, and other state, federal, and industry sources. The authors also identify areas where data are insufficient to understand impacts, and further research or reporting is needed. Electricity demand is one of the industry’s most significant infrastructure considerations. Water use depends heavily on facility technology and local conditions. Data centers have a distinct economic profile; relatively few operational jobs, but substantial economic activity. Land-use effects are small statewide, but can be more significant locally.

From Opportunity To Infrastructure: Scaling Rooftop Solar In Commercial Real Estate (UK), Cush and Wakefield, Real Estate:UK, Forsters, and Push Power

The authors found that the UK’s untapped commercial rooftops could become a major new source of solar energy generation with enough output to match that of 20 Hinkley Point C nuclear power stations. This, if used correctly, could massively increase UK renewable energy production, fast-track the UK’s path to net zero, improve national energy security, reduce the need for solar deployment on agricultural land, and drastically reduce energy costs for occupiers amid ongoing energy price uncertainty. The authors used data and responses from 70 real estate organizations with combined assets under management of over £500bn. The authors found that less than 10% of suitable commercial building roof space has been used for solar generation to date, providing just 3-5GW of solar capacity. While solar technology is widely championed in principle, its deployment remains significantly below its technical potential, particularly across the industrial and logistics real estate sector.

The Dirty Truth. They promised you clean energy, but there's a Dirty Truth behind your rising utility bills, Ver Beek et al., Sierra Club

The authors studied the 50 parent companies that own the most fossil fuel generation, comprised of 76 operating companies, which collectively own half of all remaining coal and gas generation in the U.S. They analyzed their plans to retire coal by 2030, not build new gas plants through 2035, and build clean energy to replace fossil generation and serve new load by 2035. The utilities studied scored 7/100, earning an F, worsening their overall score by 11 points since 2021.

Stored Potential. The impacts of utility-scale battery energy storage systems on communities and the grid, Draklellis et al., RMI

The authors examine large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) projects across the United States, drawing on available data to assess their reliability contributions, economic impacts, community benefits, and improving safety performance. Batteries help keep the lights on during grid stress. Battery storage can lower electricity costs during high-demand periods. BESS projects can provide meaningful local economic benefits. About New Research

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Chefs are more than culinary innovators. They connect farmers and consumers, shape food culture, and use their purchasing power to influence how food is grown, produced, and served. 

“Chefs are in a very unique position on planet Earth to be changemakers,” says Andrew Zimmern, Emmy- and James Beard Award-winning chef, television host, author, and food advocate. They operate at the intersection of immigration, gender and pay gaps, hunger and food insecurity, food waste, and a range of other global issues.

At “Chefs Save the World,” held in partnership with the James Beard Foundation and CARE at Climate Week NYC 2026, culinary leaders, farmers, and advocates came together to explore how chefs can use their platforms to build a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable food future. Watch the full event replay here.

Throughout the morning, speakers emphasized the importance of diversity throughout the food system—not only in crops and ingredients but among humans.

“If we demand more diversity in our food system, that is what is going to build resilience,” says Chef Bleu Adams, Executive Chef at Black Lamb Group and Director of IndigeHub. And diversity in kitchens builds human resilience, too, she adds.

“Better food begins with embracing diversity. Whether that’s diversity in our fields, diversity in our ingredients, diversity in the people preparing our food, or diversity in the people we welcome around our tables,” says Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg.

Right now, chefs are “operating in the most difficult environment they’ve ever operated in,” says Erica Helms, Chief Growth Officer at the James Beard Foundation.

Meanwhile, food producers and workers face systemic challenges worldwide: “In many parts of the world, the people who are food insecure are the people who are growing the food,” says Emily Janoch, Associate Vice President for Evidence and Learning at CARE. “This is not a charity problem but a systems problem.”

That imbalance also affects the restaurant industry, which navigates pricing food to appropriately compensate farmers and food workers while caring for their own employees.

“How do we balance the really tricky economics of being able to actually charge the cost of food to be able to pay farmers fairly and pay our employees and offer benefits to allow them to stay in this industry?” asks Liz Murray, Chief Operating Officer at The Marlow Collective.

Panelists also spoke to the importance of respecting local knowledge and ensuring communities have the resources to lead their own solutions. Foreign aid, especially in times of disaster, is critically important—but it must allow the skills and knowledge of local communities to lead the way.

“We prefer you give us what we need and trust we will utilize it in the way that best fits our community,” says Chef Adams. And Chef Fariyal Abdullahi, Executive Chef and Partner at Hav & Mar, agrees: “When you have the right partnership, it’s never to override what’s happening on the ground. They have the knowledge; they just need resources.”

Chef Sean Sherman brought the conversation back to the importance of diversity in food systems, calling for greater recognition of Indigenous foodways and the knowledge embedded in regional ingredients. 

Through NĀTIFS, the North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, Sherman works to revitalize Indigenous food systems and promote greater access to culturally rooted foods. His Ring Diet, or Regional Indigenous Nutritional Guide, offers a framework for understanding the nutritional value of foods connected to local ecosystems.

“We’ve been living under this eurocentrism of our food here in North America…Even in a city like New York, we can find food from all over the world, just not right here where we’re standing. There are no Native American restaurants in this city,” says Sherman. 

“We have a lot of evolving to do as humans and as a global community. Food is that connection.”

Sherman says greater curiosity about different plants and ingredients around the world can help drive change. “There are so many more plants and proteins out there that we haven’t touched.” He adds, “Be curious. That’s the biggest part of how change happens.”

Explore the entire Food Tank event schedule during Climate Week NYC 2026, and live-stream every Summit on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo by Ryan Rose for Food Tank.

The post Chefs Are Driving a More Diverse, Resilient Food System appeared first on Food Tank.

President Donald Trump’s second term has been a nightmare for global cooperation on climate change. Trump has yanked the United States from the Paris climate agreement, attacked a global agreement on a carbon tax for cargo ships, and threatened countries with tariffs if they get too vocal about climate. 

This week brought a notable exception. World leaders at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday approved a unanimous resolution on how to handle sea level rise, and the United States did not block it from moving forward. The passage of the accord represents a rare win for multilateralism, made all the more notable by the fact that the agreement includes references to climate change and climate aid for developing countries. 

The declaration could bring new momentum to efforts to help small island states, said Philip Davis, the prime minister of the Bahamas, in an interview with Grist.

“Our landmass is less than 3 meters above sea level, we are already seeing our land being swallowed by water, and the global effort to stem the carbon footprint has stalled,” he said. “I think this declaration will perhaps heighten the flow of action.”

For many low-lying countries, the implications of this agreement could be profound. Some island nations, like Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, face almost total inundation over the next century as rising temperatures melt the world’s ice sheets and glaciers. It had never been clear what would happen to those sovereign nations. Under the agreement, those states will continue to exist as political actors even if their landmass disappears. They’ll also retain control over their old maritime borders, the stretch of sea extending from the coastline over which a country has exclusive control for fishing, energy development, and other military and economic activity. 

An aerial view of a strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and a lagoon in Funafuti, Tuvalu. The island nation of around 11,000 people is facing total inundation as sea levels rise. Mario Tama / Getty Images

The declaration is the result of a campaign by the Alliance of Small Island States, an influential bloc of low-lying island nations. Recent rulings from international legal bodies have helped affirm countries’ continued rights in the face of sea level rise, but the world’s leaders had never endorsed those rulings. 

“What was long treated as a legal ‘presumption’ is now an affirmation,” said Kamal Amakrane, the managing director of the Global Center for Climate Mobility and the climate envoy for Trinidad and Tobago, which helped initiate talks toward a global declaration. He noted that the world has agreed to preserve small islands “by consensus, in a year when consensus has been hard to come by.”

The document enshrines strong protections for states at risk of losing land. It holds that countries “can … maintain their maritime zones in the face of physical changes resulting from sea level rise,” a principle that the document calls a “presumption in favor of continued statehood.” That echoes a landmark climate ruling from the International Court of Justice last year, which held that “once a State is established, the disappearance of one of its constituent elements would not necessarily entail the loss of its statehood,” and which affirmed that international law requires countries to respect one another’s established borders.

The declaration will go a long way toward helping secure the future of small island states. For the Bahamas, protecting pristine ocean territory is essential to its tourism-driven economy. Davis said that the legal protections will safeguard his country and others against efforts to claim ocean territory for industries like deep-sea mining.

“This cannot be a free-for-all,” he said. “This cannot be might is right, and might takes what is there.”

The agreement also includes strong language recognizing that developed countries and historic emitters have an “urgent” obligation to provide “expanded access” to adaptation funds for small island states. This money could build seawalls or restore mangrove forests to protect coastlines from rising water, or it could help relocate populations from flood-prone areas. 

Prime Minister Philip Davis of the Bahamas addresses the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025. The Bahamas is seeking to protect its ocean territory from exploitation as its land disappears. Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images

The declaration on its own won’t do anything to increase the money available to states like the Marshall Islands. Wealthy countries are currently giving poor ones about $130 billion a year in grants and low-interest loans for clean energy and adaptation, well below the level that experts believe is necessary to avoid catastrophic impacts. The world agreed in 2024 to reach $300 billion in annual aid by 2035, but it’s too early to gauge progress toward that target. Even then, much of that finance is in the form of loans, which are hard for many island states to afford — the Bahamas has billions of dollars of debt already, much of it stemming from damages after 2019’s Hurricane Dorian.

Even so, the mention of adaptation was welcome for island nations. Language about climate aid has been much contested at recent United Nations climate talks, with wealthy nations rejecting calls for trillions that could build flood walls and elevate sinking islands. Trump has gone further and rejected almost all international aid obligations, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and pulling out of dozens of treaties. Yet neither the State Department nor other finance-averse countries rejected the language in the sea level rise declaration. (The State Department did not respond to a request for comment by publication.)

The reason for the cooperation by the United States is that legal protections against sea level rise are in every country’s interest, said Bryce Rudyk, a law professor at New York University who also serves as a legal advisor to the Alliance of Small Island States. The United States and other rich nations could lose land to sea level rise, and in some countries a shifting maritime border might jeopardize sovereign control over natural resources like oil, minerals, or offshore wind. 

“Everyone will lose land, and no one wants to lose ocean territory,” he said. “I think that’s why they were fine with making these relatively strong statements. … It’s in everyone’s interest to say, ‘We don’t want states just disappearing.’”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN passes first declaration on sea level rise, protecting island nations’ sovereignty on Sep 24, 2026.

Just before I left for Tasmania, I watched Short-tailed Shearwaters (Ardenna tenuirostris) passing Washington's coast, headed the same direction I was about to go. Around 18 million of these...

Anna Vallery, Coastal Program Manager for Audubon Washington, has long been interested in improving methods used for monitoring seabird and waterbird colonies. She is excited to keep pushing this...

President William Ruto of Kenya has called for COP31’s electrification agenda – a flagship initiative to accelerate the electrification of the global economy – to include a push for electric cookers to replace polluting firewood and charcoal.

The Turkish and Australian co-hosts of the November summit want governments to sign up to a pledge to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 and 50% by 2050. It is currently around 23%.

“We should arrive at COP31 with clean cooking firmly embedded in that electrification and efficiency agenda,” Ruto said during an event on clean cooking organised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the governments of Kenya, Norway and the US at the ongoing UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

“The kitchen is where the energy transition enters daily lives for nearly one billion people,” the Kenyan president said. He added that schools, hospitals and prisons – as well as homes – need to switch to clean cooking fuels.

COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment

Ruto said that – as well as the climate, health and gender equality benefits of clean cooking – electric cooking can make investment in electricity generation and networks more profitable and ensure households get more value from electricity connections.

LPG or electricity?

According to the IEA, about 6% of sub-Saharan African households – overwhelmingly in southern Africa – used electricity to cook in 2024 – while just under a fifth used liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

Despite being a fossil fuel and worse for indoor air quality than electric cookers, LPG is widely regarded as a clean-cooking fuel as the damage it does to the climate and to health is far less than the firewood and charcoal on which most sub-Saharan Africans rely on.

A new IEA report on electrification found that electric cookstoves are 10% cheaper over their lifetimes than LPG stoves. But they are more expensive upfront so restricted access to finance holds back their adoption, as do power cuts, a lack of access to electricity and cultural preferences.

At the event in New York, some speakers promoted electric cookers while others stressed “technology neutrality”, implying that LPG should be used where appropriate.

People gather near a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder distribution agency as they wait for a supply to be delivered on March 19, 2026 in Lucknow, India (Photo: Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images)

UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte was more in the former camp, saying that “clean cooking must be fit for the modern age of energy transitions and the age of electricity” and “genuinely clean and future-facing”, adding that countries can “ride the trends of electrification” to roll out clean cooking.

As disruptions to oil and gas supply chains push up the cost of cooking gas, Kyte asked: “Why should households and governments be locked into solutions that are simply going to be a victim to fossil fuel and price volatility”.

Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said that renewable energy offers the best potential to achieve clean cooking because decentralised clean power can get to everywhere on the African continent. 

Echoing Kyte, he added that “[renewables] detaches you from the volatility of fossil fuel that you see today, very often”, adding that it poses a very low level of risk compared with other energy systems and is one of the easiest ways of reducing emissions throughout the world.

But Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said that country realities are different and so the pathways to achieving clean cooking will require different combinations of LPG, electricity, bioenergy and other solutions.

Technology neutrality

With half of the about two billion people lacking access to clean cooking globally living in Africa, the African Union’s commissioner for infrastructure and energy Lerato Mataboge said the continent prioritises “technology neutrality” and does not have a preference for electricity or LPG if either would help achieve clean cooking. 

She said national circumstances of African countries must be respected, adding that the continent needs a range of affordable, reliable and safe cooking solutions as well as approaches that allow countries to select technologies that are “appropriate to their resources, infrastructure and household needs”. 

She added that financing decisions should not exclude viable solutions “solely because of the energy source from whence they come”. Whatever clean-cooking technology is used, she said that “affordability must extend beyond the purchase of a stove. We must ask if a household can afford the next cylinder refill or the next electricity payment”, she said.

• Sep 23, 2026 News UN Climate Summit: UN chief says world has tools to end fossil fuel age At the UN Secretary-General’s climate summit in New York, countries shared their energy transition plans while Nepal and island nations advocated for more international support Read more
• Sep 23, 2026 News UN backs push to upgrade grids slowing clean power uptake in Africa and SE Asia The Global Grids Accelerator will help turn national and regional plans to expand electricity infrastructure into viable projects on the ground Read more
• Sep 23, 2026 Justice Despite “real progress”, third of countries still lack early warning systems About 60 nations have yet to put in place a multi-hazard early warning system to protect people from disasters before they happen, the UN says Read more

Dola Oluteye, senior fellow in energy and transport policy at the UCL Energy Institute, agreed, telling Climate Home News that – while electric cooking is viable in parts of Africa where reliable electricity, affordable appliances and suitable infrastructure already exist – those conditions remain out of reach for much of the continent.

She warned that making electric cooking the only measure of a clean cooking transition could slow progress in countries where other technologies offer a more immediate solution. “My concern is a purity trap,” Oluteye said.

She pointed to an IEA scenario forecasting that, with clean cooking rolled out quickly, over 60% of people gaining access to clean cooking in Africa from 2024 to 2040 would do so through LPG, compared with 17% through electricity. Bioethanol and biogas combined would account for 11% while advanced biomass cookstoves make up 10%.

Burn Clean-stoves client Loise Wanjiku cooks inside her house at Kachoroba village in Kiambu County, Kenya, August 16, 2023. (Photo: REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi)

“The intermediate solutions cannot be abandoned while the grid catches up,” she said, but added that if handled well, cooking could be “one of the best things that could happen to African electrification”, providing the predictable demand that gives utilities a reason to invest in electricity networks and reliability.

Amina Mohammed, UN deputy secretary-general and former Nigerian environment minister, warned at the New York event against repeating the experience of programmes that supplied cooking technologies without adequately considering whether they actually worked for the women expected to use them.

Speaking after Birol, Ruto, US energy secretary Chris Wright and Norwegian international development minister Åsmund Aukrust, Mohammed joked that she was responding to “four men for whom this is a big women’s problem”.

After Birol said that the IEA had been working on the issue for 25 years, Mohammed said the fact that the problem had not been solved in that time was “probably an indictment of the international community on what is supposed to be a huge problem for women and a billion of them”.

The post Push for cooking to be part of COP31’s electrification agenda appeared first on Climate Home News.

Concern about data centers on public lands is building in the West as the Trump administration weighs at least 12 proposals covering more than 17,600 acres across six states. Earlier this week, members of Arizona’s congressional delegation demanded answers from the Bureau of Land Management about four data center proposals covering roughly 3,000 acres of public land in the state. In a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, congressional members asked for details on each project and for the plans for public input and environmental review.

“There’s been, unfortunately, a lack of transparency by the Trump administration. We found out about the proposed four data centers on BLM land in Arizona from a media source in Washington, D.C.,” said Representative Greg Stanton of Arizona.

In Idaho, there is a proposal for a four-million-square-foot data center and natural gas power plant on up to 3,700 acres of BLM land southeast of Boise, near the Blacks Creek Reservoir bird reserve. “I honestly don’t know how we would be able to keep up with that in terms of energy demand, water demand, in the region, which is already so tight,” said Lisa Young, director of the Sierra Club’s Idaho Chapter.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, BLM has asked the Interior Board of Land Appeals to set aside its approval of a right-of-way amendment that would put a data center near Boulder City on land permitted for a solar plant. Boulder City opposes returning the decision to BLM without commitments to environmental review and public involvement. A recent Pew Research Center survey showed that nationally, 60 percent of Americans say they would be uncomfortable with a new data center in their area, including 54 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of Democrats.

Pitkin County approves Maroon Bells permit

Pitkin County commissioners voted on Wednesday to approve a special use permit to take over daily operations of the Maroon Bells Scenic Area from the U.S. Forest Service starting in 2027. The permit still needs final approval from the Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the agency has not said how many acres the county would manage or released a map of the permit area. The Forest Service’s 15-day comment period has not yet been published in the Federal Register. “Pitkin County is stepping in because the federal government failed to fund one of the most iconic landscapes in the country,” said Aaron Weiss, CWP’s executive director. “Congress sets the Forest Service’s budget, and it’s Congress’s job to fund our public lands so the federal government can manage them for everyone.”

Quick hits DOGE memoir skips the part where children died and taxpayers got ripped off

Westwise

Colorado regulators approve stronger rules to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production

Colorado Public Radio

Opinion: The grassroots revolt against pollution is growing

Newsweek

Interior department blocks $428k for cultural resource projects in Yellowstone

Buckrail

National Trust, after battling with Trump, to announce legal defense fund

Washington Post | Washington Sun | Associated Press

Nearly 6M gallons of oil, gas, and waste product spilled in these western states

Deseret News

Opinion: A nature-friendly clean energy future

Ground Shift

As bears ‘spin out’ in southern Montana, wildlife managers are at wit’s end

High Country News

Quote of the day

Our national inheritance hangs in balance today. It is not an exaggeration to say that this moment is existential. For our field, for the communities we serve, and for generations to come.”

—Brent Leggs, President and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Associated Press

Picture This
@usinteriorChub in the tub,
Chunk in the trunk,
Salmon gets spotted,
Salmon gets dunked.

Big on the belly,
Thick through the thighs,
Winter is coming,
Supersize.

Tune is to the live-cameras for all the fat bear fun. See who can pack on the pounds to be the winner of this year’s Fat Bear Week contest: https://explore.org/

Photo of bear 747 by L. Law

 

Featured photo: Lake Mead and Boulder City, Nevada. Source: Doc Searls/Wikimedia

The post Data center proposals on Western public lands face growing scrutiny appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order making changes to how presidential authority under the Defense Production Act (DPA) is delegated. Previously, the president delegated a variety of authorities under the DPA to the Secretary of Energy. Trump’s executive order amends the delegation of some authorities to include both the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of the Interior, “with respect to all forms of energy under their purview, each of whom may exercise such delegated authority independently of the other.” At a time when our national public lands are already under attack, this hands Interior Secretary Doug Burgum a new way to ignore land protections and avoid following environmental laws under the guise of national security, with few guardrails or opportunities for the public to weigh in.

First passed in 1950, the DPA was originally designed to give the president limited authority to ensure that domestic industry can meet the country’s national defense needs. Over time, the DPA has been reauthorized and modified to expand the definition of “national defense” to include preparedness for national emergencies and other non-military needs. Presidents have also delegated some of these authorities to executive branch agencies. But why delegate authority to the Secretary of the Interior, whose job is to manage national parks and public lands? And why go to the trouble of stating explicitly that the Interior secretary can act independently?

One likely answer is that this is part of the larger Trump-Burgum agenda to dismantle national parks and other public lands that for-profit companies see as a nuisance standing in the way of expanded exploitation and the pursuit of greater private profits. While there are a number of legal and valid ways for companies to extract natural resources from national public lands, there are processes and guardrails in place to give the public an opportunity to review proposals and weigh in, and to ensure that other resources on those lands are being appropriately considered and protected. The Trump administration, however, has been working hard to eliminate as many of these as possible, to make it easier for companies to extract resources without having to engage with the public or conduct environmental reviews.

Oak Flat in Arizona, near the site of a proposed copper mine; Elias Butler/CC BY-SA 4.0

Another possible answer is that Doug Burgum just isn’t that interested in being Interior secretary and is looking around for assignments that bring him closer to Trump, such as personally overseeing Trump’s vanity projects in Washington D.C., or that would give him a more prominent role in global conversations about topics he finds more interesting, such as energy extraction to serve the AI industry. Early on in his time as Interior secretary, Burgum delegated most of his responsibilities to DOGE operatives, who immediately attempted to dismantle the agency through a variety of funding and staffing cuts.

Burgum also took on the job of chair of the National Energy Dominance Council, a new entity created by a February 2025 Trump executive order. The NEDC exists primarily to hold meetings on energy issues and hasn’t had much of an impact, but it gives Burgum some fancier hats to wear. Being Interior secretary makes him chair of the NEDC, and being chair of the NEDC gives him a seat on the National Security Council, a long-standing and legitimate entity with influence on U.S. foreign policy.

Burgum’s resume-building aside, expanded delegation of DPA authority is concerning for national public lands for a few reasons. Many DPA authorities become available during a “national emergency,” and during what most Americans would consider a true emergency, this makes sense. However, the Trump administration has abused the concept of an “emergency” to create open-ended blanket justifications for not following laws it finds inconvenient. The “national energy emergency,” put in place by the Trump administration in January 2025, has been used to justify policy actions to boost oil and gas drilling, prop up coal, and increase domestic mining and mineral processing, among other things. Similarly, the “border emergency” has been used to justify the militarization of public lands across the southern U.S., including the construction of a border wall through Big Bend National Park and the bulldozing of a sacred Tribal site in Arizona for border wall expansion.

With these “emergencies” in place, it’s already easy to use DPA authorities to advance the Trump administration’s policy priorities. The latest executive order gives an additional agency head the power to lean on national security to justify policy changes that will impact over 500 million acres of national public lands. Burgum would have at his disposal a new set of tools that could enable him to use national security as an excuse to prioritize oil and gas production, expand mining, or approve data centers on national public lands.

Clark Mountain in the Mojave National Preserve, near the site of a proposed gold and rare earths mine; Matthew Dillon via Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

This is concerning enough under the existing DPA. What if the DPA were updated to give agency heads even greater authority to waive laws in the name of national security? A proposal considered earlier this year would have done exactly that. The DPA Modernization Act would have expanded the authority agency heads have to waive regulations that implement environmental laws and the authorities available during a national emergency. While this particular proposal was shelved in favor of a “clean” reauthorization of the DPA without these changes, this proposal or one like it could come back in the future, including later this year when Congress considers the National Defense Authorization Act.

Between the “national energy emergency” and the “AI arms race,” it’s clear that Trump and Burgum are looking for any way they can tie national public lands to national security so that they can get environmental protections out of the way of extracting resources and building data centers, all while avoiding taking public comment on proposals they know are overwhelmingly unpopular with the public. They’re also failing: despite policies put in place to address the “energy emergency” and escalate the development of AI, energy prices are persistently high, and opposition to the data centers that support AI is intensifying. Perhaps the Trump administration should focus on something Westerners actually want: policies to ensure that outdoor recreation, clean water, and wildlife habitats on national public lands are protected for future generations.

 

Featured image: Bears Ears National Monument, an area that has drawn interest from uranium and coal mining companies; BLM Utah

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